


Take Me to the Water

by despommes



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Fluff and Smut, Hand Jobs, Humor, I really don't have an excuse for this :/, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Table Sex, Threesome - M/M/M, Trectorcard, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:42:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24902527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/despommes/pseuds/despommes
Summary: He should have just walked away. He should have just covered his eyes, turned around, and scampered back down the hallway from whence he came. He should have booked it back down the stairs to Sypha to tell her he couldn’t find the tome on advanced geomancy she’d sent him to look for and hoped to God that would be the end of it, and they could all just move on and let him forget this had ever happened.Trevor Belmont does none of these things.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Hector, Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont, Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Hector, Background Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades, Trevor Belmont/Hector
Comments: 29
Kudos: 109





	Take Me to the Water

**Author's Note:**

> This is a WIP I've had sitting in my folder for about a month now. Just something I've been steadily working on in between projects. I don't really have an excuse! Just thought it would be something fun to try.
> 
> I guess you could say this takes place in the same universe as Sozo? Maybe not the same timeline. They're all living in the castle together. Regardless, you shouldn't have to read that story in order for this one to make sense.
> 
> Thank you to moonstone-mama for beta-reading!!!!!
> 
> If any of you are interested, I've made a playlist to go with this fic. You can find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTvWXsZ8KjyZnuoIGQ0XbWipMAbGC7tuG).

He should have just walked away. He should have just covered his eyes, turned around, and scampered back down the hallway from whence he came. He should have booked it back down the stairs to Sypha to tell her he couldn’t find the tome on advanced geomancy she’d sent him to look for and hoped to God that would be the end of it, and they could all just move on and let him forget this had ever happened.

Trevor Belmont does none of these things.

He’d heard something. A vague banging, like furniture being moved or knocked over, followed by a quick shout. Knowing whatever lurked in this castle, or _not_ knowing rather, that warranted an investigation to him. He’d promptly dumped whatever books he’d been looking through to the floor and made his way down the hall, expecting to find Hector fretting over an overturned chair or a stubbed toe, as Sypha was still downstairs and he could hardly picture Alucard being clumsy enough to stumble into anything.

In the end, he is glad he left the books behind. The spectacle that greets him as he rounds the corner would certainly have made him drop them all to the floor.

What he is _not_ expecting to find is Alucard spread out over a table, all but naked as Hector fits himself between his legs.

For several seconds, Trevor simply stands there and _gapes._ Actually gapes. His jaw falls open and hangs there, ready to catch any wayward flies should they come buzzing by. His traitorous feet won’t move no matter what his brain tells them. An unwelcome and clammy sweat starts up under his collar, undoubtedly a result of the heat beginning to spread its way up his throat and on the way to his face.

He needs to move. He needs to _hide._

Trevor ducks back towards the wall on the other side of the doorway. Luckily, neither of them appear to notice him, occupied as they are, though he’s truly amazed they haven’t been able to find him purely by the hammering of his heart in his chest. Trevor leans against the wall, struck entirely stupid as his mind tries to comprehend what he’s just born witness to.

He supposes he should have been suspicious as to what it was they were doing in the observatory during the middle of the day, anyway. He couldn’t fathom what the hell there was in the sky to look at while the sun was still out, but it seems they’d very obviously had other plans. Trevor takes a deep breath, as deep as he dares while still trying to remain undetected. A strained gasp echoes from the room behind him. Alucard, if he had to guess, and he instantly quashes that train of thought where it starts.

Jesus, he can still _hear_ them.

They could have at least shut the fucking door, he seethes. For God’s sake. If they were not going to pay the rest of the castle’s inhabitants the courtesy of fucking each other in the privacy of their own rooms, the very least they could have managed was to shut the goddamn observatory door before, so that Trevor Belmont wouldn’t have to walk in on them trying to maul each other in broad fucking daylight. He sighs through his nose. That image was going to be burned into the insides of his eyelids for far longer than he cared to think.

Another sound, an airy little whine he would never have thought Alucard capable of if he were not practically being held hostage to hear it now. A needy exhalation of Hector’s name accompanied by what could have been a clipped “please.” Something flares in the pit of Trevor’s stomach. Something hot and queasy and wholly unwelcome.

His eyes fly open.

Hector answers lowly, something along the lines of “I know,” and then “just a moment.” Trevor had planned to go the rest of his life without ever having to learn just how Hector’s voice sounds during sex, without ever having to _think_ about Hector having sex, if he were being honest. The man was so fucking awkward to be around under everyday circumstances completely devoid of coitus that Trevor nearly bursts a blood vessel any time the possibility enters his realm of conscious thought. Watching the two of them make eyes at each other at the dinner table, or whisper in each other’s ears, or the momentary touches they probably think are discreet is more than enough, thank you.

There is a blessed beat of silence and Trevor is convinced he’s been caught. That a head is going to pop itself out of the door that’s still hanging wide open and find him there, plastered against the wall as though he were trying to mimic the tapestries and artwork that decorate this corridor. Nothing of the sort happens. Just as he starts to relax, a loud and wanton moan slices through the air and straight into his eardrums. Trevor blinks at the floor, wondering just what the hell Hector is doing to Alucard to get him to make _that_ much noise, and—

No. Oh no. No no no. _No._

As a young man of the Belmont lineage, Trevor often considered to himself just what it was he would say if he ever came face to face with Dracula himself. There had been plenty of cliché tag lines, ideally said as he dealt the final blow that would rid the world of his family’s greatest enemy. He’d tossed around the far from eloquent but perfectly effective “fuck you.” In reality, when he’d finally been given the chance, he’d been too focused on not having his guts ripped out or his throat torn away to come up with anything clever. Now, he wishes he could see the giant, genocidal, bloodsucking bastard just _one_ more time, so that he could ask if the castle was home to any trapdoors. He is currently hoping against all odds that there is one conveniently located beneath his feet so that he might be sent hurtling through it and far and away from the desperate, slutty noises Dracula’s son apparently makes just before he is about to be fucked. Maybe it would lead down into the dungeons. Somewhere nice.

Curiosity coils itself like a vine through the base of his skull. It itches there, stings with each hushed murmur from the other side of the wall, and Trevor’s fist clenches against the rough stone, his teeth grinding together in resistance to the sick realization that slowly curdles in his blood.

God help him, but he wants to _look._

Months ago, when their merry little band of murderers was still relatively new in its founding, there had been a night spent in a roadside inn on their way to the old Belmont estate. As the only lady in their group, Sypha had been given her own room which left Trevor the pleasure of boarding alongside Alucard in a dingy room that boasted nothing more than a woodlouse ravaged chair, a blocked up chimney, and one snug, shitty bed.

Neither of them had been willing to tough it out on the floor for the other, and so they’d passed several tense hours with their backs to each other as they pretended to fall asleep. Trevor had been fidgety, for a multitude of reasons, and after a while he felt Alucard shift on the other side of the bed, rolling to face him. He’d expected to be admonished for his tossing and turning, maybe even kicked, but nothing he’s ever lived through in his precious few decades of life could have prepared him for what came out of Alucard’s mouth.

The half-vampire spawn of the bane to his entire family line had cocked his head, skin gleaming in the dusty moonlight leaking through the filthy inn window, and _propositioned him._

“If you insist on keeping me up all night,” he’d drawled, fangs glimmering in the gloom, “there are far better ways to go about it.”

Trevor had been so stunned, so astounded that he couldn’t think to do anything but stare at him. He stared directly into Alucard’s stupidly beautiful face, his weirdly luminous eyes as they drifted over his prone form stretched out beside him. _Yes, absolutely,_ his dick had cried to him almost immediately after the question had been given voice. He distinctly remembers how completely dry his mouth had run at the prospect of all of that pale skin, those long limbs, that infuriating mouth trembling and begging underneath him. And he would have made Alucard beg then. Son of a vampire king or no, Alucard had been nothing short of an insufferable _git_ those first few weeks and Trevor’s flimsy patience only extended so far.

“No,” had been his answer, and he swears he’d probably startled himself more than he’d startled Alucard.

He could tell instantly from his face that Alucard was, most likely, not that used to being rejected when it came to things like this. And why should he be when he looked the way he did? Men and women probably fell over themselves for what he was offering Trevor. There was the initial shock at having been turned down in his eyes followed by what Trevor swears to this day to be hurt. He supposes that had been what surprised him the most. Alucard hadn’t even liked him then and yet he’d turned his head, swallowing something down before sucking in a sharp breath that sounded like it burned him. He muttered something dismissive, “Suit yourself,” trying to appear like the whole thing had hardly mattered to him, and then rolled over for the rest of the night to lie deathly still while Trevor tried to piece together what the fuck had just happened.

He’d told himself the next morning that he had said no because of the dire nature of their goal, to put an end to the genocide sweeping across the country, and all the stakes that came with it, but he knew that wasn’t true. If a pretty girl at the tavern bar had been the one to ask him instead of Alucard he wouldn’t have hesitated. It wasn’t the fact that Alucard was a man. Trevor had been with men before. Even paid for a couple of them. He tried to convince himself it was because of who his father was, because of the teeth in his mouth, because of Trevor’s own family name, but deep down he knew better.

The heart of the matter had been that, despite the arrogant, witty, untouchable façade he threw up whenever he was met with other people, Alucard was not okay. Not in the slightest. Lisa Ţepeş’ murder was well over a year old at this point, but Alucard had spent that year asleep in a crypt under a city. Her death was still as fresh and raw to him as it had been whenever it was he’d sealed himself away. And here they were, the three of them together on their way to kill his father. It was fucked. The whole thing was _fucked,_ and while Trevor was not about to sit down and talk Alucard’s grief out with him, he could recognize it for what it was. Alucard had fixed him with hooded, sultry eyes and Trevor had looked past them to see the wreckage of a man on the inside. In some ways it was like looking into a mirror.

Alucard had come to him looking for a distraction. While Trevor could relate, having spent many nights of his own aching for something other than the emptiness that sat in his guts like rot, he wouldn’t be that for him. He was not interested in being a means to an end. He wouldn’t begrudge Alucard for that, but neither would he enable it.

That was not to say he never _thought_ about it again.

Because he had. Several times. An embarrassing amount, actually, if he were being totally honest. Before he and Sypha fell into each other, in more ways than one, he used to wonder what it would have been like had he said yes to Alucard. One more tankard of ale in the tavern that night and he very well might have. He wondered what it would have been like to pin Alucard’s wrists above his head. He wondered if all of that long, blond hair was truly as silky as it looked. What would it have been like to take a fistful for himself and find out? How would Alucard have moved with his body underneath Trevor’s? What did his sweat taste like? Did he even sweat? What sounds would he have made?

Well, he thinks as he listens to the heavy breathing in the room beyond, he at least knows that much now.

He had told Sypha about the whole thing once. He’d been just a tiny bit drunk, and she had needled it out of him as she did most things. Damn her perceptive mind. There was still much she was naïve to, but unfortunately her ability to read other people like so many of her books allows her to see straight through most of them. He was no exception.

He’d felt a bit scummy telling her that, doubting very seriously Alucard would appreciate knowing Trevor let slip one of the lowest points he’d hit since they all met each other. But Sypha was different. Sypha was good. She was kind and understanding and she cared far too fucking much to ever think less of either of them for it.

“It doesn’t mean much now, I know,” she’d said to him after he told her, “but I’m glad you said no.”

Trevor had cocked an eyebrow at her in the firelight. Another inn room, this one a tad bit nicer than the one in his memory. “Oh?” he asked, squeezing her in his arms for good measure. “Jealous?”

She looked at him quizzically, genuinely puzzled. “No,” she’d told him, deadly serious. “Of course not. I just… would have hated to see him hurt. Anymore.”

“You think he would have been?”

“I know he already was.” Her finger traced idle patterns in the hair over his chest. It had made him shiver. “Can I ask you something?” She sat up in his arms, too eager to wait for a response. “Do you think it ever could have been Alucard here, like this? Instead of me?”

He’d laughed at that. The idea of Alucard stretched out in bed beside him, every haughty, prickly inch of him, was hard to imagine. “I don’t know about that.” He doubted it. There was definitely something to be said of brotherhood born in battle. Trevor trusted Alucard at his back, and he knew the sentiment was reciprocated. That said, Alucard only seemed to tolerate him most days, though on some it could be called a begrudging fondness.

A fondness he is certain would dissipate into smoke should he ever find out Trevor is eavesdropping on him in a very compromising moment with his _own_ lover. He’s amazed that he hasn’t already been caught, loud as his heart is beating between his ribs. He’d have thought Alucard would have sussed him out by now, what with his uncanny hearing and freaky sense of smell.

He feels like an utter pervert. Friends do not listen in on friends having sex in secret, and yet here he was, the burning urge to look threatening to consume him. Alucard’s reaction not withstanding, the idea of Hector looking up to see him there in the doorway is nearly enough to send him scurrying back down the hallway on its own. The man would be nothing short of mortified. He shied away from the topic of sex any time it could potentially be brought up, and anything he and Alucard got up to on their own he kept strictly private. Trevor didn’t blame him for that; he had his reasons. Whatever had happened to him in Styria had severely fucked him up. Trevor couldn’t imagine all the shit he and Alucard have had to work through. The thought nearly makes him dizzy.

Still. _Still._

_“Adrian.”_

Trevor looks. It is a mistake.

Alucard remains sprawled out over the surface of the table, all of that flawless, pale skin on full display. His trousers are gone, a shapeless lump on the floor around them, his shirt rucked up under his arms. It leaves his chest and belly bare to the room. Hector is still fully dressed, firmly planted between Alucard’s spread legs. His body directly faces the open door, and all he would need to do to see Trevor is simply lift his head. Judging by the way his eyes remain glued to the man underneath him, Trevor doesn’t think he’ll be looking away anytime soon.

“Is there oil?” Alucard asks him. Trevor feels his heart drop right to his stomach. Oh, they were _really_ about to do this. He sees Hector nod to him, digging into his pocket to pull out a tiny phial of amber colored fluid. He fumbles for a moment with the cork of it, pouring some into his palm. Alucard takes it from him when he’s done. “Hurry,” he whines in the meantime, as Hector warms the oil in his hands. “Hurry, please.”

“I know,” Hector says again, leaning forward to press his lips against Alucard’s belly. He takes a moment to work his way up the massive scar there. “I know, hold on.”

Trevor can’t quite see what he’s doing from this angle, but whatever it is it makes Alucard gasp, high and thready in his throat. Trevor can practically taste it on the air. The stifling heat in his face burns as it occurs to him that Hector probably has his fingers inside of him, twisting to stretch him open. Alucard’s head drops down over the edge of the table then, all of his hair spilling down after him. Like some kind of golden, honeyed waterfall or some shit, something far more poetic and pretty than Trevor himself was capable of. His eyes are closed, face effortlessly slack in pleasure. There’s a minute flex to Hector’s wrist between Alucard’s thighs and the resulting moan it draws out of him sets the hair on the back of Trevor’s neck on end.

This, he thinks, as Hector starts to kiss his way down the length of Alucard’s neck, was such a bad idea.

When he next looks to Alucard’s face, his eerie yellow eyes are looking directly at him.

He should have just walked away.

Trevor is expecting to see shock there, followed by anger, rage, indignation. He wouldn’t even have blamed him for it. This was fucked up. He shouldn’t be seeing any of this, and yet he was. This unbridled intimacy, the naked waver in Alucard’s voice, the unabashed tenderness in Hector’s every move, none of this was for him. He had no right. Whatever wrath Alucard felt fit to dish out would be what he deserved.

But there is no rage. There’s no yelling, no slammed door, no ripping of Trevor’s head from his shoulders. Alucard doesn’t make a sound. He simply stares straight into Trevor’s eyes, lips glossy and parted as he shudders through whatever Hector is doing to him. And, fuck him, but Trevor couldn’t look away if he wanted to. He can only stare as Alucard’s mouth curves into an impish smirk. The coy chuckle that follows in its wake shakes him to his very core.

The absolute _bastard._ He’d known Trevor was there the whole time.

“Mm,” he hums into the air, a hand reaching up to card through the loose silvery curls at the nape of Hector’s neck. He turns his head to kiss him, his tongue a flash of soft, wet pink as it slips into the other man’s mouth. Alucard whispers something into his ear afterwards, too hushed for Trevor to hear from this far away, but it makes Hector laugh.

“What’s gotten into you?” he chuckles. Alucard rucks the back of Hector’s shirt in his hands to tug it over his head. It joins the other clothes on the floor.

“I just want you,” he murmurs into the base of Hector’s throat. There is a bruise there, small and half-faded into the tan of his skin. Trevor wonders just how old it is. Alucard soothes it over with his tongue. “Badly.”

“How badly?”

“Oh, _so_ badly.” Trevor watches as Alucard reaches for the front of Hector’s trousers, curls his fingers around his cock through the fabric. The resulting hitch of breath rattles through Trevor’s own lungs, eyes drawn to the errant lurch of Hector’s hips. “Are you going to make me beg, Hector?”

“I…” He trails off through a clenched jaw. He continues to rock forward into Alucard’s waiting palm. “No,” he finally answers, and Trevor is almost _disappointed._ Alucard tilts his head.

“Maybe some other time, then.”

“God, _Adrian.”_

Alucard grins as his head falls back to the table, the cat who’s gotten the cream. Or is about to, anyway.

His eyes seek out Trevor’s again as Hector tears open the laces of his trousers. For some reason, it feels like a challenge. Trevor holds his gaze for as long as he can, as long as he dares while both of them wait for Hector to finish with the phial again. Alucard’s hand trails down the taut plane of his belly. White teeth dig into his plush bottom lip, a long fang glinting brilliantly against the reddened flesh. He hisses when he finds what he’s looking for, an indulgent sound that throbs its way into Trevor’s blood.

He’s fucking touching himself. While looking directly at Trevor. He’s looking directly at Trevor with his cock in his hand and Trevor is _never_ going to be able to scrub that picture from his memory. Not for as long as he lives.

Hector straightens between his legs, planting a fleeting kiss to the bend of a pale knee. The other curls itself around his waist to bring him closer. “Ready?” he asks Alucard. Trevor is almost taken aback by how considerate it is. Sweet, even. It makes him feel guilty, but not guilty enough to look away.

“Yes, yes, hurry.” The playful tone of his voice is easy. Affectionate. “Hours you’ve made me wait.”

Hector scoffs. “Oh, please.”

They laugh quietly together and the smitten look on Alucard’s face as he leans back over the edge of the table makes Trevor miss Sypha so suddenly it hits like a punch to the gut. Fuck. He really shouldn’t be thinking about Sypha right now. Not while watching Hector steady himself over Alucard, hands curled tenderly around the curves of his ribcage as he sucks in a hard breath. Alucard again looks to Trevor with that smug little smirk firmly in place.

It’s wiped away at the first thrust of Hector’s hips.

His eyes flutter to a close, those obscenely long, pale lashes fanning prettily out over his cheekbones. Alucard’s lips fall open in a sincere gape. His chest heaves as he pants, voice breaking over each frantic inhale. Trevor can see his thighs tremble around Hector’s sides. Hector himself looks much the same as Alucard, thoroughly debauched in the afternoon sunlight of the observatory. It catches in the sweat that beads over his shoulders.

“Jesus, Adrian.” He leans forward, slowly, to press his forehead to Alucard’s breastbone. Alucard curls one hand into his hair again, the other reaching back to clutch at the lip of the table. “I… _fuck…”_

“Please.” Alucard practically sings the word, a whiny litany that makes Trevor’s dick jump in his smallclothes. “Please, please, can you just—”

“One second.”

“Oh, _please.”_ Trevor watches the twitch in Hector’s jaw as he attempts to brace himself. He tugs one of Alucard’s legs up to rest over his shoulder. “You said you wouldn’t make me beg.”

The next one shuts him up. Alucard’s brows draw deeply in over his eyes as Hector drags him close with the hand still firmly at his ribs. He _sobs._ Hector smothers a grin into Alucard’s calf.

“How’s that?”

“Again,” Alucard demands, and when Hector obliges with a well-aimed stroke his whole body jerks. He makes a strangled noise somewhere between a keen and a yelp, fingers flailing to latch themselves around one of Hector’s wrists. “Oh, _oh,_ there.”

The words are desperate as they leave his lips. Trevor stifles a groan into his knuckles. He reaches down to squeeze his cock once where it’s grown stiff and uncomfortably hot against his leg. Just the once, though. He snatches his hand back as though he’s been burned. No, no, _no._ He is not about to do this while watching his friends fuck.

“Here?” he hears Hector say. He bucks again and judging by the gutted cry Alucard barks into his shoulder it was wickedly accurate.

“Hector, don’t you dare.”

“Sorry.” Hector turns his head in mock apology. “I said I wouldn’t make you beg.”

The familiar cacophony of skin slapping against skin makes for a fitting accompaniment to the breathy little sounds knocked loose from Alucard with every pull of Hector’s body. Each thrust pushes him just a little bit further up the table only for Hector to tug him back down onto his cock with the following one. Alucard _relishes_ it. His head lolls to the side, arms wrapped around himself as he basks. One of his hands trails over the line of his throat, the other skating over the soft skin below his navel. He mewls wantonly, content and happy as a lark to lie back and let himself be fucked like he were being paid for it. He is utterly shameless in his pleasure, and it is dazzling to watch.

Trevor wonders just how much of it all is for exaggeration, a little embellishment for his impromptu audience, and how much is sincere. A bit of both, if he were to guess, more the latter than the former. While Alucard is slightly prone to dramatics, as is probably befitting of the son of fucking _Dracula,_ he is surprisingly disinclined to deception. Nevertheless, each sultry flash of his gaze pins Trevor against the wall he hides behind. Every movement Hector makes is reflected in the tiny fluctuations in his expression. A sharp jolt of his hips manifests as a well-gnawed lip, short nails ghosting along pale thighs as a shiver. Through all of it, those eyes always turn back to him. 

_Look,_ they challenge him. _Look at me. Look at what he is doing to me._

“More,” Alucard breathes, and while the word is clearly for Hector his eyes are for Trevor. It throttles him. Trevor’s fingers claw against the stone so hard he actually worries he might leave gouges behind. “More, Hector.”

Hector grits his teeth and bears down, slipping a hand under the small of Alucard’s back to bring him closer. Trevor can hear what the change in angle does to him, a startled hiccup in the back of his throat. Hector smiles at once again having rendered him speechless.

Alucard takes the next few seconds to regain his composure, or whatever is left of it, and to formulate how best to retaliate. Trevor waits with bated breath as he reaches to run his hands over Hector’s chest. He delicately traces the lines of his collarbones, sliding over the sweat-slick skin there. He makes his way into the dip between his pectorals, veering down towards abdominals and at the very last second his trajectory shifts. When his thumbs brush over Hector’s nipples the man sputters, body slumping forward in an abrupt halt.

It’s cheeky, and a little bit mean, but Alucard looks thoroughly satisfied with himself as Hector struggles to catch his breath. Hector snatches up his wrists once he manages to recover, holding them against the wood grain of the table. Alucard chuckles. He counters with a torturously slow roll of his spine, the line of his body undulating against the cradle of Hector’s pelvis.

“Adrian,” he warns, the name sounding strangled in his lungs. Alucard looks up at him, tongue peeking out to wet his lip. He does it again. Hector scrambles to pin his hips down. He looks moments away from flying apart at the seams. “Oh, you have to stop doing that. Now.” 

Alucard hums in amusement. “Why?” he asks petulantly, straining in Hector’s grip. It’s purely for show. Trevor knows all too well the preternatural strength that body is capable of. Alucard yields beneath Hector because he chooses to. Because he trusts him with it. “I think you like it. And you make the most _delicious_ noises.”

“Because if you don’t, this— _hah—_ is going to end a lot more quickly than you want it to.”

He again lowers his head to Alucard’s chest, lips hovering over the scar there as he tries to pull himself together. Alucard strokes his fingers through his dampened hair almost as if to soothe him. “All right.” He takes Hector’s face in his palms, lifts him so that their eyes meet. His thumb strokes sweetly over a tanned cheek. Hector leans into the touch. “Forgive me?”

It makes Hector laugh, a quiet sound that is impossibly loud by the time it reaches Trevor in the hallway. He tilts his head to kiss Alucard. Curls his arms around his shoulders to crush him close, tangling his fingers through the golden waves that still tumble over the edge of the table. Alucard sighs into the kiss, loses himself in it. When Hector starts to move again all the bravado seems to melt away from him. What’s left is something so raw, so vulnerable it makes Trevor’s stomach ache.

They look fucking gorgeous together.

It all starts to come down around him at once, just how much of a cock he is for watching this.

… Well. He’s come this far. Might as well see it through to the end.

An end that appears to be swiftly approaching, if the steadily rising pitch in Alucard’s voice is anything to go by. His face has grown flushed, a pretty pink stain that trails down over his throat to spread past the strong ridge of his clavicle. Hector noses a pale lock of hair aside to whisper into his ear, something Trevor is both dying to hear and glad he cannot.

“Oh, God,” Alucard gasps near Hector’s temple. “I’m—I’m _close.”_

Hector nods urgently, one of his hands slipping between their bodies and just out of Trevor’s line of sight. He can guess as to what it’s doing. Alucard writhes below him, body bouncing further towards the lip of the table with each drive of Hector’s hips. Hector cranes his neck to sink his teeth into the flesh at the curve of Alucard’s neck. He bites him there, hard. Hard enough that Trevor can see the skin bunched between his teeth, and the sight is so shocking, far more savage than he’d ever expected Hector capable of doing anything. That seems to do the trick, and when Alucard finally comes it rolls through him like a storm, every bit as dark and devastating as a maelstrom in the middle of the ocean.

His back bows in a beautiful, sinful arch. His legs pull in tight at Hector’s waist as the other man coaxes him through it. Alucard’s eyes close against the force of his climax, his mouth hanging open in a soundless cry. For all the talking he’d done throughout the whole ordeal, for all the noise he’d made before, he is gorgeously silent as he spills sticky and white over his stomach. Hector sits up to stroke him. He looks every bit as captivated as Trevor himself, watching the creature beneath him twist around his cock. Trevor wonders just how many times he’s seen this, how many times he’s watched Alucard unravel in his hands. Countless times, he’s sure, and yet the reverence in his face stuns him.

In the midst of it Alucard’s eyes open by the barest fraction, a blissful sliver of aurum simmering behind his lashes. They scald him where he stands, gold searing into blue as they meet one final time. Trevor holds his breath until they close again.

Hector is not long behind. He manages to hold on long enough to wait out Alucard’s squirming, but as soon as the tension in his limbs slackens all the endurance left to him splinters. He groans, low in his chest, and the labored rhythm he fights his way through falters. Trevor watches him hike Alucard’s leg higher on his shoulder, watches him bury his face into the alabaster skin of his thigh before he breaks. He comes with a bitten off gasp, grinding deeply into Alucard’s body for a few precious, final times. Alucard gasps. He presses a hand down low over his belly, as though feeling for the warmth spreading there.

Trevor decides that’s as good a time as any to leave.

Very quickly and very stealthily, he turns tail and makes a break for it before either of them can look back and see him gawking there in the doorway. He keeps every step light and calculated so that his boots make minimal noise against the ornate carpet that lines the floor of this particular corridor. As he goes, he manages a (completely dignified, thank you) little shuffle in order to adjust his fucking dick in his trousers.

Once he’s fairly certain he’s safely out of earshot, Trevor Belmont takes a loud, deep breath and chases it with a very sincere “What the absolute _fuck.”_

Sypha is exactly where he had left her, curled up in the middle of their rumpled bed sheets and surrounded by a plethora of open books, most of them in languages he’s never even heard of. She looks up as he walks in, a cheerful smile firmly in place at her lips. His heart stutters as the dimples in her cheeks wink into view.

“There you are!” she greets him, fingers leafing through the pages of the tome closest to her. “You were gone an awfully long time. Thought you might have gotten lost. I—why are you so sweaty?”

“Are any of these books particularly fragile?”

“I… no.” She shakes her head, looking out at her collection. “I don’t think so. Why?”

With one broad sweep of his arm, Trevor knocks them all to the floor.

“Trevor!” Sypha shrieks. He climbs into the bed with her, scooting on his knees to toss her against the pillows. She falls back with an amused huff of air. Her grin broadens. “I was _busy_ with those!”

“Mm, and now you’re busy with something else.”

He kisses her, savoring the laughter that bubbles from her lips to his. Sypha wriggles against the hands that slowly begin to pull at her clothes, ticklish. “What’s gotten into you?” she asks, and suddenly all Trevor can think of is Hector bent low over Alucard, the very same question posed in his own much deeper voice. He shivers.

“Nothing,” he answers somewhere between her breasts. “I’ll tell you later.”

That evening, after Sypha has been thoroughly ravished and all of her books put back where they belong, they sit down to dinner with the castle’s other resident couple. It’s nearly the same as it is every other night they’ve spent together: the same easy chatter at the same table, all in the same kitchen with the same cups and plates and cutlery. Everything was almost so very _normal_ that it might have been another mundane meal shared amongst their ragtag group of unlikely friends.

Almost.

Try as he might, Trevor was having a hard time acting as though he hadn’t caught the other half of the table’s occupants fucking in broad daylight and then stayed to _watch_ like the village peeping tom.

He’s decided that simply staying quiet is probably the best course of action in a situation like this. Through the banal ambient noise of forks and knives over china, Sypha picks Hector’s brain over the subtleties of geomancy seeing as Trevor, for whatever reason, had been unable to locate her book from earlier. He was, by trade, an alchemist, and she was surprised to learn that there was quite a bit of overlap between alchemy and geomancy. Alucard responds occasionally when prompted, though his knowledge on the subject appeared to be limited to basic concepts. Trevor is beyond grateful they, thankfully, don’t think to consult him for his admittedly limited expertise. As far as he was concerned, a rock was a rock. The only important properties he could attribute to one was how big it was and how far it could be thrown.

Hector prattles on, thoroughly absorbed in whatever the hell it is they’ve come to in terms of geological divination, and Sypha’s eyes are bright as she listens. She’ll interject excitedly with a question here and there, or an observation she’s made in her own experience, and the two of them will delve further down the rabbit hole. Alucard watches Hector with a wistful expression on his face as he talks, a look that old, sentimental women might describe as lovesick. It’s nearly enough to put Trevor off his dinner, if he’s being honest, but not quite. 

There’s no perceived awkwardness that he can discern from either of them and it leads Trevor to think Alucard has of yet failed to mention the audience they’d drawn during their little romp in the observatory. He doubts very seriously Hector could stand to be in the same wing of the castle as Trevor if he knew, much less sitting just a few feet away at the same table. Trevor doesn’t know whether to be relieved or anxious by the thought.

Trevor, for the most part, keeps his eyes on the table and pointedly does _not_ look up at anyone. He very methodically categorizes and shifts the food on his plate as he tries to make his way through it: braised venison kept neatly in the center, a moat of gravy to surround it, his vegetables sorted into their own little piles to the side. If his mother were still alive she’d be livid to see it. It’s probably not the most conspicuous way to go about avoiding suspicion, but he’s at his wit’s end and is frankly starting to grow bored.

And, of course, Alucard does away with it all with one word. Trevor knows he’s in trouble the second those eyes slide his direction. He doesn’t even have to look up to know they’re there. He can fucking _feel_ them, oppressive and heavy like a woolen sweater in the middle of blazing summer. Trevor bites down on a cooked carrot to try and stave them off—

“More.”

—and the carrot promptly decides to divert its course down his windpipe.

Trevor chokes. He coughs belligerently, sputtering into his napkin as he reaches for his cup. Suddenly everybody at the table is looking at him, at his reddening face and watering eyes and Trevor finds himself wishing the carrot had actually killed him. He looks pointedly at Alucard, managing a strangled _“What?”_ around a mouthful of wine.

“I asked if you’d like any more roasted potatoes.” As though to prove it, Alucard innocently nudges one of the dishes in his direction. The stupid prick is smirking at him. Of course he is. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and even as he chokes Trevor is powerless to stop the memory swiftly rearing its head in his brain. Alucard’s voice from earlier that afternoon, a high, wanton chorus as he’d begged Hector, _more,_ all of his stupid blond hair falling around his face like a veil, lips glistening and kiss-red where he’d bitten down on them, pale skin all but golden in the sunlight streaming in from the copious windows of the observatory—

“No,” he spits after finally having managed to get his airway under control. Sypha rubs a hand soothingly over his back, face pinched in concern as he clears his throat one more time.

“Are you all right, Trevor?”

“Fine, thanks.”

He’s lucky his cup is empty now, that he’d dropped his knife and fork to his plate, because when Alucard turns his head toward Hector beside him, subtly pushes the serving dish towards him, he tilts his head and coos to him, “More, Hector?” like he’s trying to keep it a secret.

Trevor hears him.

Hector blinks at him and then at the potatoes still on his plate. “Oh, no thank you.”

Alucard takes up his own fork then and spears one for himself, staring purposely at Trevor as he sinks his ridiculous teeth into it.

Fuck him. Fuck Alucard to death.

* * *

A week and a half goes by and nothing comes of it. There are no more furtive glances, no more quips meant to rile him up, no more illicit encounters to stumble upon in the castle. Trevor would even venture so far as to say things were returning to the same sort of normal they’d known before. In fact, the more time that passes the easier it is to pretend the whole thing never happened. He figures that Alucard’s had his fun, gotten whatever demonic notion to toy with Trevor out of his system, and returned to fucking Hector in private.

He means to tell Sypha about it, he really does, but it is by no means an easy conversation to start. He’s sure she wouldn’t be angry; nothing about their lives is conventional, and she’s not one for feeling insecure or jealous. Speakers have different attitudes about these sorts of things, she’d tried to explain to him once. Extramarital… endeavors were not necessarily frowned upon, provided all parties involved were knowledgeable and consenting. _That_ had been a difficult concept to wrap his head around. Regardless, that was _not_ what was happening here. They weren’t married. He’d only looked. He hadn’t actually fucked either Alucard or Hector, nor was he asking to.

Still. He had been raised in the church. If he’d learned anything from his upbringing, it was how to repress any self-realizations that were uncomfortable to think about. And this was supremely fucking uncomfortable, if he were being honest. He still planned to tell her about it, and soon, but a few more days to brace himself was a liberty he was willing to take.

Naturally, just as he is beginning to come to terms with the previous week’s bullshit this monstrous hellhole of a castle decides to hurl yet more at him.

It’s late, and he’s feeling restless. None of them were prone to retiring particularly early; given their lifestyles, staying up well into the early hours of morning was typically the norm. A buzzing, anxious energy hums annoyingly at the back of his skull. In the past, he would have been quick to reach for a pint or a fight to drown it all out, but people _depended_ on him now so healthier coping mechanisms were called for. 

These days when a strange mood took him he opted to spend a little extra time in the armory to train or maintain his weapons. Sometimes he simply snooped around in the racks and storage crates just to see what was in there. While he himself couldn’t see the appeal in limitless centuries of cold, undead life, all that time had certainly allowed Dracula the opportunity to collect some, frankly, pretty good shit.

The _issue_ was that Alucard liked to keep certain parts of the castle locked up. Most of the laboratories were sealed while not in use as a preventative measure. The dungeons were strictly off limits, barred off with great chains and locks for effect, though that hardly seemed to stop Sypha from trying to weasel her way in every now and then. Trevor was given access to the armory whenever he wanted, but that meant he had to go to Alucard for the key. He didn’t mind so much; he’d seen what was kept in there, and a lot of it looked fairly priceless. He’d probably lock it all away as well.

That’s why he had gone to the study. To get the goddamned key. That was it. Alucard kept it in his father’s old desk. He’d told Trevor he was welcome to come for it any time he liked, but Trevor still liked to ask first if he could. This late, though, if Alucard wasn’t in the study then he’d just take it and go. He could return it in the morning before breakfast, tuck it back into the drawer before anyone was the wiser.

The corridor was dark, but there was a fire lit from inside the study. Its warm orange glow cut through the shadows in a rounded arc on the stone floor. Maybe Alucard was still inside working, answering his mail or journaling, or whatever the hell it was he did in Dracula’s former study. Personally, Trevor would have tried to avoid the place were he in Alucard’s shoes.

Well. Alucard _was_ in his study.

Trevor had only meant to pop his head in for a few seconds, ask for the key, and then be on his way but of course it could never be as simple as that. The chair is turned towards the fireplace, meaning Alucard is facing away from the door as he sits in it. It’s not necessarily a totally unfamiliar picture, but as Trevor steps fully into the light his stomach does a cartwheel beneath his heart at what he finds.

Alucard is not alone.

Perched there in his lap, looking for all the world like the very picture of indulgence, is Hector. His arms are around Alucard’s shoulders, looped so that his wrists cross around the back of the headrest. His thighs bracket Alucard’s where he sits, bare feet dangling near the rear legs of the chair and just above the carpeted floor.

It seems like he’d been in the midst of dressing for bed, as though before all this he’d come to persuade Alucard away from his work for the night. The black leggings he wears look thin, and the sleeves of the night shirt are faintly ruffled near the hem, likely one of Alucard’s. From what little Trevor can see the collar is wide enough to have left his throat and collarbones bare, bare enough for Alucard to find with his mouth. Hector tilts his head back a bit, almost as though to offer him more of his neck. His eyes are, blessedly, closed, and that is the lone saving grace to the whole damn spectacle.

Trevor actually rolls his eyes.

What are the odds, really? What are the chances this would happen for the second time in nearly as many weeks? A small part of him, the petty part that thrills at the thought of throwing Alucard off of his pedestal, wants to announce himself somehow. Knock on the door, or clear his throat just a little too loudly. Something to startle them apart and hopefully inspire enough shame to make sure they close the fucking door next time, because honestly, he cannot keep doing this.

The same clammy sweat starts under the collar of Trevor’s shirt. He recognizes the watery feeling settling into the joints of his knees, and Trevor knows he has to leave. He has to distance himself from the situation before his feet cement themselves to the floor, or before Hector opens his eyes and sees him. _That_ is enough to make him squeamish.

Before, when it had been Alucard staring boldly at him as he was being railed over a table, that had been something Trevor could stomach. As shocking as it had been, it was at least a little familiar; that defiant, smarmy edge he’d given Trevor since the day they’d met in Gresit. He didn’t have that with Hector. If anything, his relationship with Hector was distant and awkward at best, and if he looks up to see Trevor watching this Trevor is almost entirely positive either one or both of them would spontaneously combust. Which would be disastrous. For everyone.

He makes to move, but it’s just too fucking late. The second he turns even the slightest bit to scurry from the doorway, Alucard drags his tongue briefly over Hector’s throat. Hector makes a dreamy sound that does all sorts of unexpected things to Trevor’s insides, and then his eyes blink open in the backlit gloom of the study.

It takes a moment. When his gaze first falls on Trevor it’s heavy-lidded, warmed through with the ministrations Alucard continues to lavish over his skin. The heat of it prickles as it settles over him. When Hector’s brain catches up with what it is he’s seeing, that heat oscillates in the space between them. Trevor sees the instant he realizes who it is standing in the doorway, watching as Alucard licks him over like he’s fucking dessert. He goes completely still. Trevor can practically hear the halt in his lungs. His eyes widen by just a fraction in their sockets and Trevor braces himself for the flames he’s convinced are about to spring to life beneath his feet.

Several seconds pass. Neither of them move a muscle as they stare at each other. Hector seems too stunned to do anything but look at him, and Trevor doesn’t know whether to stay frozen or turn tail and run.

Alucard, apparently oblivious to just what exactly has happened, simply continues with what he’s doing even as Hector gapes at Trevor. He plants slow, wet-sounding kisses over the tanned column of Hector’s throat. He stops once he reaches what Trevor knows has to be a pulse point, the rhythm of Hector’s carotid jumping against his lips. The shock in Hector’s eyes wavers for a glaring second, as though at odds with something else. Something that wins out when Alucard drags his tongue over that fragile thrum beneath his skin.

Hector _moans._

Trevor almost blacks out.

This is a fever dream. It has to be. He’s hallucinating in his bed downstairs, deathly ill and seconds away from leaving this batshit crazy world behind for good. He has to be dying because in no viable reality could Hector, _Hector,_ be looking at him while he makes a sound like that. There is no reasonable explanation for the unabashed lust on his face, like a maiden on her wedding night with Alucard’s stupid white night shirt and the glow of the fire surrounding his silhouette like a halo. And, there is no fucking way it’s making Trevor’s cock this bloody hard.

Poor Sypha. He would at least have liked to kiss her goodbye. It’s just as well; he suspects she would complain about the smell.

Hector’s eyes again fall to a close and Trevor takes the opportunity to pinch his own leg as a last ditch effort to convince himself this is all just a figment of his imagination. It does not work. Hector and Alucard do not dissipate in a thin stream of watercolor shapes like most of his dreams do. No, Alucard keeps mauling at Hector’s neck while Hector simply clings to him like he’ll die if he dares to loosen his grip. God help him, but Trevor keeps watching.

The next time Hector looks up, it’s because Alucard has managed to extricate himself from his throat. Pale fingers brush a few locks of hair back behind his ear. He whispers something to Hector, something Trevor can’t hear over the mirthful crackling of the fireplace and the thudding of his own heart in his chest. It kills him, not knowing just what Alucard says to him, because Trevor is growing more and more convinced by the second that Alucard knows he’s there. Could he be asking if Hector’s comfortable? If he wants to stop? If he wants Trevor gone?

Whatever it is, the answer is no. Hector slowly shakes his head, silver curls swaying near his chin as he does. It makes Alucard smile, and Hector shudders as he places a fleeting peck behind the shell of his ear. Alucard lays his fingers against the curve of Hector’s jaw, gently pulls his face to the side in order to kiss him. It’s… surprisingly soft. Romantic, almost. There’s no explicit sense of urgency like he’d seen that day in the conservatory. Where Alucard had been chatty and brazen as he’d sought his pleasure, Hector is more subdued. He is quiet in the darkened hush of this castle at night. There’s no goading, no playful banter as Alucard lavishes him in dedicated affections, and Hector simply leans in, lost to it all. 

There is a fractured beat of stillness between them, and then Alucard carefully noses his way back to that pulse point just below Hector’s jaw. Trevor’s muscles stiffen on instinct at the sight of bright, white fangs against flesh. The mindless urge to step in and stop him swirls in his gut, his heritage and hunter’s intuition compelling him to put an end to this, _now,_ but the knowledge that this is Alucard, his friend, Hector’s lover, reigns him in. Alucard needed blood. He’d clearly been getting it from somewhere, and Hector looked more than willing. He knew Alucard would never stoop to enthralling a human for blood, and, by the looks of it, he didn’t need to.

Those fangs settle upon their mark and, with all the precision of a surgeon, Alucard delicately sinks them past tender skin. Hector gasps. His hand moves to tangle fingers into the golden hair hanging over Alucard’s shoulder, not to pull but simply to hold. Trevor’s teeth grind in his skull.

He didn’t know what he expected it to look like when Alucard fed, but it was nothing like this. Trevor had seen vampires gnash their teeth through their victims, chins and throats painted in stolen blood as they’d ripped bodies apart in their gluttony. This was so different. He’d had a front row seat to see them fucking just days earlier and yet somehow this is so much more naked, so vulnerable and intimate. Alucard holds Hector close, cradles him like he’s something precious even as his blood wells under his teeth, and he draws it slowly past his lips in small, measured sips. Hector’s jaw drops in the low light, as though he can’t decide whether to cry out or bite down, and he looks _intoxicated._ Trevor knew that some people found a vampire’s bite to be pleasurable, arousing even, but Hector looks like he’s being wrecked. Suddenly the flush Trevor can feel crawling up his neck begins to take on new colors.

He watches in barely contained wonder as Alucard continues to drink, savoring Hector like a priceless, foreign wine. At some point Trevor sees his arm moving, and Hector jumps. He gasps, the sound followed by the tiniest hiss of leather against fabric, and Trevor realizes Alucard is pulling apart the laces of his leggings. After a little more shifting around, he spots the telltale jostle of Alucard’s elbow from behind the chair’s backrest, arm working in a lazy stroke. Hector pitches higher in his seat on his lap. Alucard’s lips leave his neck for a brief moment to gently shush him, tongue gathering up any errant droplets of red before returning to the task at hand.

A pale thumb brushes over the plush swell of Hector’s bottom lip, as though to dampen the labored breaths that he takes, and when Hector sucks it into his mouth the resulting groan from Alucard buzzes along Trevor’s nerves. Hector’s eyes dart his way then, pinning him there in his desperation as he curls his tongue over the neat cuticle of Alucard’s thumbnail. His own blunt teeth scrape over the whorled pad of a fingerprint.

An immediate, intrusive thought takes Trevor then, as he imagines _his_ thumb between Hector’s lips. Imagines the wet heat of his mouth, the humid rush of his breath, the silky glide of his tongue through his teeth.

He wonders what his cock would look like there instead.

Not even the insidious burn of shame is enough to dull the wave of pure, undiluted _want_ that courses like a toxin straight to the pit of his belly. Trevor’s hands flex uselessly at his sides in the aftermath.

Hector’s muted sounds start to take on a desperate edge. They linger in the balmy atmosphere of the study, air bubbles trapped in slow, syrupy honey. Trevor can almost taste them on his tongue. Hector lets go of Alucard’s thumb so that it leaves a slick trail over his jaw and back down the unoccupied side of his neck. Trevor couldn't tell whether it was the sensation of Alucard drinking from him or if they’d been at this longer than he thought, but he recognizes the look on Hector’s face. It was the same one he’d seen before, when he’d been buried to the hilt inside Alucard’s body and struggling not to drown.

“Adrian,” he whimpers, throat working minutely against Alucard’s lips as he breathes his name, and it’s the first word he’s uttered since Trevor had found them like this. Hector pants, his gaze settling back to Trevor as though looking for something to anchor himself to this plane of existence.

Alucard pulls away from the artery, his lips stained a macabre, ruby red, and the arm that continues to work Hector quickens. He whispers once again at his ear. Trevor almost groans with the need to know just what the fuck it is he’s saying to Hector to coax him into coming. Whatever it is, it must work, because in seconds Hector begins to tremble, his toes curling against the chair’s legs. Alucard licks up whatever stray trickles of blood had spilled free in his absence before he again seals his lips over the tiny pinpricks his fangs have left behind.

Hector’s head falls back, his mouth slack in a deep, stuttered moan. Tanned fingers clutch at Alucard’s hair, the back of his shirt, while Hector’s hips rock wantonly into his hand. His eyes again slide closed, deep, ocean blue disappearing behind his lids as he finally spills with Alucard’s teeth in his throat. A lone tear slips free from his lashes and, fuck, if it isn’t one of the most dramatic, sensual things Trevor’s ever born witness to. Of course Hector cries during an orgasm, of course he looks like some kind of debauched, hedonistic prince as he does it, of course he calls Alucard’s given name like a filthy poem as he unravels in his lap. Alucard sucks in a sharp breath through his nose, teeth bearing down as hard as he dares against Hector’s skin all while he strokes him through it.

Hector mewls as he comes down, tired, strung-out sounds in the back of his throat as he slumps against Alucard. He pets aimlessly at the back of his golden head as he waits for him to finish. Alucard pulls away with a pained inhale, like a man on the verge of drowning and then suddenly coming up for air. He swipes his tongue over the twin puncture wounds at Hector’s pulse and Trevor watches, fascinated, as they heal to a close. There’s not even a mark left behind; just faint, sticky smears of quickly drying red. Alucard makes short work of licking the skin clean, not a drop gone to waste.

He does the same to the fingers striped with Hector’s seed.

Timidly, Hector’s eyes open to fall on him again and Trevor decides, in no uncertain terms, that it’s time to get the fuck out of there.

He bolts for the stairs, not caring that his footsteps sound as though a horse has been let loose in the castle. When he finally reaches his room, the same bedroom he shares with Sypha, he finds her in the en suite bath, almost fully submerged in the claw-footed tub. She gapes at him from underneath a blanket of foamy bubbles, her hair slick against the curve of her skull as she takes in his panting, sweaty form in the doorway. On any other night, he would have found the sight completely adorable. He still did, if he were being totally honest, but there was far too much weighing on his mind to fully appreciate the suds clinging to her chin.

“Trevor,” she starts delicately, brows quirked at his sudden and disheveled appearance, “what are you—”

“I need to talk to you,” he interrupts her, raking a hand through his hair. “Right now.”

He tells her everything. The whole sordid tale. He tells her about that afternoon in the observatory, the day he hadn’t been able to find her book. He tells her about the confusing week and a half that had followed, and lastly about what has just happened, minutes ago, in Alucard’s study. Sypha listens with rapt attention, her eyes widening bit by bit as Trevor continues to speak. By the time he’s done her jaw has dropped so thoroughly he worries she might be about to swallow her bathwater.

“Wait a minute,” she gasps, water splashing about her as she sits up. “So, that night at dinner, when you were acting so weird!”

Trevor frowns. “I wasn’t acting weird.”

“Oh. My mistake.” She snorts. “When you were playing with your food like a child and trying not to look anyone in the eye, that was you acting completely _normal_ then.”

“Okay, Sypha, I get it.”

“It was because…! Because you saw Hector and Alucard…” She hides her mouth with a pruny hand to silently mouth the words _having sex_ as though there were anyone in the room besides themselves to hear.

“Yeah,” he mutters defeatedly.

“And they let you watch.” She grins suddenly, as though she’s just realized something. “Is that why you were so… _you know…_ when you came back downstairs?”

Trevor takes a slow, deep breath. “Yeah.”

Sypha muffles a poorly hidden giggle behind her wet knuckles. “Well. Was it a good show at least?”

_“Sypha.”_

“What!”

“It was not a show. Hector didn’t even know I was there the first time.” He rubs nervously at the back of his neck. “And I’m not sure Alucard did in the study.”

“Oh, he definitely knew.”

Trevor shoots her a suspicious look. “And how are you so sure about that?”

“Trevor, the man can hear a rabbit cough from the other side of the woods. A few days ago I was looking through a dusty pile of letters in one of the drawing rooms. I sneezed and he came down all the way from a different wing to ask if I was feeling all right. If he couldn’t hear you stomping your way down the hall, then I’d say we have bigger things to worry about than your peeping on the two of them.”

He pinches at the bridge of his nose, not entirely happy with the truth to what she says. He’d suspected Alucard was doing all of this shit on purpose. He’d really, really hoped that wasn’t the case, but he had to admit most of it was blind, optimistic denial. Because facing the reality that Alucard had _meant_ to be caught was just too fucking weird, even for this place.

“And Hector? He can’t even take his shirt off in front of you or me without looking like he’s about to faint. How do you explain that?”

“Well.” She taps idly at her chin, emulating the picture of being lost in thought. “If he’s that self-conscious… do you really think he would even consider doing something like that out in the open without weighing the possibility anyone could walk by and find them? Now why would either of them do that?”

Trevor purses his lips. Because Alucard is a demon, he wants to say. Because Hector is a madman who apparently fucks demons. Because both of them want him to suffer. “I don’t…”

Sypha smiles. She drifts closer to him through the water. There’s a sly glint in her eye he recognizes. “Do you want to know what I think?”

 _No,_ his brain asserts, because he knows exactly where the fuck she’s going with this. Honestly, he doesn’t think he can survive hearing it out loud.

“I think…”

“No,” he grunts, turning away from her.

“That Hector and Alucard…”

“Stop it.”

 _“Wanted_ you to see them.”

And there it is. The conclusion that every single bizarre aspect of this entire ordeal has been pointing to, that he had simply outright refused to entertain. Because now he has to wonder why. Why the fuck would they want him to catch them? To humiliate him? Some strange fetish to satisfy? Did they want him to—

“Nope.” Trevor firmly shakes his head. “Nope, that’s fucking insane. You’re insane.”

“I’m not that insane,” she claims, and he gives her a long-suffering glance to refute it. “Whatever. That’s beside the point. “

“What is your point then?”

“If they’re fine with letting you watch them, what else do you think they might be fine with?”

Trevor sweeps his hand through the water, splashing her directly in the face. Sypha sputters for a second. She glares mischievously at him as she wipes it from her eyes. “We’re not going there,” he informs her.

“Why not? I’m curious!”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“Why _not?”_ She crosses her arms over the water. The defiant little pout that finds its way to her face is deliberate, a tactic she knows works on him every single time. Damn him, but he’s as defenseless against it now as he ever is.

“For all we know, this could be just one big misunderstanding.”

“Like anything in this castle is ever that simple.” Sypha traces over his knuckles with a soaked finger, leaving glistening trails in her wake. Trevor shivers despite the steam. “You know, if you wanted to… explore anything there…”

“Jesus, Sypha.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“You are making a _lot_ of assumptions right now.”

“Hypothetically!” she insists. “I wouldn’t be jealous. Alucard and Hector are friends; I trust them. And, well.” She bites her lip. “It would make for an interesting story, should you feel inclined to share any details with your lady friend afterwards.”

“You’re a pervert.”

“Says the voyeur!” she counters. “Glass houses and all of that, Trevor Belmont.” Trevor opens his mouth to defend his honor, but she sticks out her tongue. “You could just talk to Alucard, you know.”

“Yeah.” Trevor laughs derisively. “That’s not happening. I can think of about a hundred other more painful, unsavory things I’d rather do than talk to Alucard about what gets his rocks off, and what I could possibly have to do with it.”

“Oh, Trevor, now we both know that’s not true.”

He blinks at her. It actually renders him speechless.

“In fact,” Sypha drawls, her foot appearing from the ridiculously plush layer of bubbles. She points her toes, extending her leg to poke them teasingly along the inseam of his trousers, just to the side of his still half-hard cock. The water on her skin leaves a tiny dark spot in the fabric. “I think you liked it.”

“Not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.” She giggles again. It’s contagious. Trevor can feel a tug at the corner of his mouth. “Unless all of that is for little old me.”

“... It could be?”

“Happy to see me, Belmont?”

That makes him smile. “Always,” he tells her. Sypha waggles her eyebrows at him in what he supposes she’d meant to be a suggestive way, but in reality it just makes her look like there’s something wrong with her face. Like she’s having a stroke, or some kind of seizure. It’s silly and sweet and sincere: all things he cherishes about her.

Trevor pulls off his boots and nothing else before hopping into the water with her.

“Trevor!” she squawks as he swoops in close. Water sloshes haphazardly over the side of the tub and all over the tiled floor. “You’ve still got your clothes on!”

He grins as he kisses her. “Oops.”

* * *

He goes back for the key in the morning, because if there were ever a time he felt the need to blow off a little excess steam, it was now. If that happened to coincide with the time of day everyone else usually gathered for breakfast in the kitchen, then that was just a coincidence.

It’s very strange, he thinks, as he starts to rifle through the drawer of Alucard’s desk, to be back in this room after what had happened the night before. The damn chair is still sat in the middle of the room to face the fireplace, as though the two of them had simply gotten up and left afterwards. Like it was no big deal. Just a casual handjob in the study accompanied by a bloody midnight snack, all with the door wide open. Par for the course here in Dracula’s castle, as it were.

The sunlight does much to change the atmosphere of the room, but it’s not enough to drown out the memory of Hector’s panting, breathless cries of Alucard’s name. Or the sight of Alucard’s thumb caught between his teeth. Or the way his back had arched just before—

Trevor finds the key exactly where it always is, buried beneath a small stack of stationary. He pulls it out and closes the drawer but just before he turns away his eyes land upon the portrait of Lisa Ţepeş propped up on the desk. Her serene smile meets him from the confines of the frame. He jumps. He’d almost forgotten it was there.

A strange, twisted form of guilt takes up residence in the pit of his stomach. Suddenly, Trevor is gripped by the urge to _apologize_ to it. He winces awkwardly as he meets her painted eyes. _Sorry_ , he wants to say. _Sorry for walking in on your son getting his back blown out in the conservatory the other day. Sorry for watching him stroke off your husband’s forgemaster in here last night. Sorry for liking it. The man has beautiful tits, though. You must be very proud._

It occurs to him, as he stares at the dead woman in the picture, that he might be losing his mind. And that’s when Alucard walks in.

“Good morning.”

He’s not sure it is a good morning, actually.

Trevor sighs to Lisa Ţepeş as he tries to prepare himself to turn and face her spawn. He can hear the smug fucking look on his face even with his back to him. Alucard is standing in the doorway, exactly where Trevor had been the night before. He looks annoyingly good in the early morning sun like this. His shirt today is silk, with subtle ruffles along the low collar. The pants are as infuriatingly tight as they always are. He’s leaning casually in the doorway, like he’s waiting for something.

“Alucard,” Trevor greets. His voice is gruffer than he’d meant it. He holds up the key in his hand, as though that itself should be explanation enough as to what he’s doing in here. “I was just. Heading to the armory.”

“Before you go.”

Alucard walks into the room. The heels of his boots thud lightly on the rug beneath their feet. Panic mounts in Trevor as he watches him traverse the distance to the chair, and when he turns it to face the desk it makes him want to bolt. The implication of what happened in that chair last night, what Alucard _knows_ he’s seen, screams between them. Alucard sits in the chair then, crossing his legs. His chin comes to rest in the palm of his hand, almost as though he were bored.

“Let’s talk.”

God fucking damn it.

“About what?” Trevor asks stupidly. Alucard laughs at him. Well. So much for playing ignorant.

“What, indeed.”

“This might come as a surprise to you,” he sighs, feeling a migraine gearing up between his eyes, “but I’m not really in the mood for your bullshit right now. Let’s just get to the point, shall we?”

“All right, then.” He tilts his head, and every single inappropriate thought, feeling, and urge Trevor has tried to suppress ever since he got a glimpse of what Alucard looks like pinned beneath someone else, delirious with pleasure and crying to the four winds, surfaces. He looks stupidly good. With his stupid hair falling over his cheek, the stupid scar on display under the low collared blouse, his stupid fangs glinting past his lips. “Enjoy the show?” he asks nonchalantly, like he were simply asking about the weather. Trevor sighs.

He’s really starting to hate Alucard.

“Is that what all that was?”

“You watched, did you not?”

“You left the damn door open. Anyone could have walked by.”

“Hm, now you’re starting to get it.”

“Don’t _fuck,_ with me, Alucard,” Trevor barks. “I’m not in the mood. Either spit it out or leave me alone. I’m growing tired of this,” he gestures vaguely towards the space between them, “game you think we’re playing. Because I’m not playing anymore.”

“Eloquent as ever. Fine.” Alucard uncrosses and recrosses his legs, and Trevor pointedly keeps his eyes trained on his face. “We’ll drop the pretense, since you seem lacking in patience this morning. I’ll be blunt: you could have walked away, and yet you did not. You stayed to watch. Both times. Why?”

“Fuck off.”

“Come now, Belmont. You demanded honesty of me, and you’ll get it, but only if you offer it in return.”

Trevor’s hands clench into fists, nails digging into the skin over his palms. His teeth grind between his jaws. “What’s the point? You already know the answer.”

“That’s true. I do.” Alucard smirks. “The distance from this chair to the door is roughly nine feet, approximately the same from the table to the door in the conservatory. From nine feet away, I can hear your heart rate. I can hear your breathing. I can hear every noise you make. You could lie if you wanted, but we both know better. Do you know what it sounded like to me, Trevor?”

God, Trevor wants to smack that shitty little grin right off his ridiculously beautiful face. He glares. “Alucard…”

“It sounded to me like you were enjoying yoursel—”

Slowly, deliberately, Trevor steps closer. He leans over the chair, gripping at the armrests to cage Alucard in. He crowds in close, puts himself directly into the man’s space and lowers his head so that their foreheads are practically touching. Alucard’s smile never falters but there is something: a tiny, barely perceptible hitch in his breath. A frail gasp Trevor would never have known was there if it weren’t for the air of it ghosting over his lips. He knew he was being goaded, that this was likely exactly what Alucard wanted out of him. God help him but he didn’t have the self-control to do anything but deliver.

His voice is low, gravelly like broken glass beneath a bootheel. “What the fuck do you want?”

“Do you remember that night in the inn?”

“Yes.”

“I offered myself to you then. You said no. You wanted me, but you said no.”

“… I did.”

A calculated stretch of his neck, leaning his head against the back of the chair so that the sunlight hits the long line of his throat. Again, Trevor does not look. “I have a proposition for you.”

Trevor knows exactly what he is about to ask. He’s known for days, if he’s being honest, but that was the thing. He’d been trying to delude himself. Hadn’t wanted to think about it for the very same anxiety festering in his stomach that very moment. His gaze never wavers from Alucard’s. He stares directly into his bizarre yellow eyes, rising to the challenge in them because if there is one thing Trevor Belmont is not, it is a coward.

“And what is that?”

“An invitation. To share our bed.”

Trevor blinks. He sucks nervously at his teeth. Anticipating the words did not make the blow of them any easier. Alucard cocks his head as he waits for a response, and some of his hair brushes over the side of Trevor’s cheek. Trevor breathes in. This close, Alucard smells of flowers. Orange blossom, he realizes, as well as something darker, more visceral. A dangerous edge to the scent that raises the hair on his arms, sets his nerves on edge beneath his skin.

Blood.

He wonders just how loud his heartbeat is in Alucard’s ears now.

“You’re depraved,” Trevor tells him right to his face.

Alucard’s smile widens. He straightens a bit, diminishes the already shrinking space between them just that much more. “If I am depraved,” he breathes, and his knee shifts upwards to drag over the line of Trevor’s groin, against the outline of his stiffening cock. Trevor startles at the contact. Badly. “Then what does that make you?”

Trevor fists a hand in the pretty silk of his shirt. Alucard chuckles and the remnants of his breath trail over Trevor’s lips. It nearly makes him shiver. “Are you suggesting that I go behind Sypha’s back for _you?”_ he asks venomously. “Because if you are, Alucard, this conversation is over, as is any respect I ever might have had for you.”

The mirth in his face dims. Alucard’s lip curls with distaste. “Of course not,” he hisses. “Sypha is my friend. Without her blessing, none of this means anything.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Speakers aren’t as closed-minded about these sorts of things as your church.”

“I am aware,” Trevor tells him. He purposefully neglects to mention Sypha’s words from the night before, hesitant to go down that road before he’s given anymore information. “Individual people might feel differently, though.”

“Then if she does, consider this whole thing null. There’ll be no more offers, no more _games_ to play. It’ll be as though nothing ever happened.”

Reassured, Trevor nods. His nose bumps gently over Alucard’s as he does it. He takes a breath to steel himself for his next question. “And… say she does consent to… whatever this is. What then? Where does Hector fall in all of this?”

“He is… interested.” Alucard drops his gaze to Trevor’s chest over where his heart is thumping wildly against his sternum. “Especially after the events of last night. I think it shocked him, just how exhilarating he found it to be.”

“I frighten him, Alucard.”

“He isn’t frightened of you. Intimidated, maybe, but not averse to the idea.”

“So he wants this?”

“He does.” The teasing note to his voice is gone, replaced now by grave sincerity. “We both do. We wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise.”

Trevor had figured as much. This strange, antagonistic chemistry that has simmered between them since that underground crypt below Gresit was one thing, but he’d be a fool to ever consider Alucard might choose him over Hector in any regard. He’s had months in this castle to see for himself just how utterly lost they are in each other. It is similar to what he has with Sypha; forged in different fires, maybe, but no less deep for it. Relief would be a funny way to describe the strange comfort it brings him to know that, but he supposes it fits well enough.

Trevor relents. He pushes himself away from Alucard, stands up straight to square his shoulders. “I’m assuming there are conditions to this.”

“Oh, there will be.” Alucard gets up. He busies himself with smoothing out the wrinkles Trevor’s left behind in his clothes. “Though we will cross that bridge after you have spoken with Sypha. There’s still much to discuss.”

Trevor scoffs. “I’ll say.”

“I take it that is a tentative ‘yes?’”

He scrubs a hand over his face and up into the mop of his hair. He’d slept on it while it was wet the night before, after the bath he’d forced Sypha to share. “Yeah,” he admits begrudgingly.

Alucard bites at his lip. “Good.” Trevor relaxes a bit when he turns to leave, long legs striding slowly towards the door. “We’ll talk more later,” he throws over his shoulder, and then he’s gone. It’s just Trevor left behind in the study with the portrait of Lisa and the key dangling from his sweaty fingers. Her eyes consider him again from the canvas, so very like Alucard’s in everything but color.

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” he says quietly to her, “but I’m probably going to fuck your son. And his necromancer paramour.”

He’s fairly sure he imagines the disappointed pull to her face. Fairly sure.

Trevor spends far longer in the armory and the attached training room than he’d planned. It was easy to lose himself in the familiar rituals of his training routine. Warmups, followed by repetitions, followed by cooldowns, drills devised for each weapon in his repertoire. By the end of it all he is drenched in sweat and deliciously tired and his head just a little more clear for it. When he’s done, after having maintained Vampire Killer, the Morning Star, and his short sword with the proper oils and sharpening stones, he goes to find Sypha.

She’s holed herself up in one of the libraries, he finds, and the look on her face when she sees him is warm enough to settle most of the butterflies fluttering through his guts. He’d neglected to put his shirt back on before coming to look for her, and she glances appreciatively at the sight of his bare chest. He’d be lying if he said the sudden swell of vanity he feels is unrelated.

“Well,” she calls to him, shutting the book in her lap to a close, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Trevor kneels on the floor in front of her chair, fitting himself in between the stacks of research and literature. Her face softens for him then. He closes his eyes when she brushes a damp section of hair behind his ear, fingers trailing over his cheek.

“I spoke with Alucard this morning.”

“Did you, now?”

He nods silently. Sypha takes his huge, calloused hand in hers. It never fails to amaze him just how small her palm looks against his own. “Did you mean what you said last night?” he asks her, because if he is going to do this, he needs to know. He would do right by her before anything else. “About how you’d feel if I wanted to… _explore_ anything.”

“I meant it,” she tells him. “It’s all right, Trevor.”

“This is not easy for me.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

She steers his head so he can lay it over her knee, enjoying the way her nails scratch at his scalp. “You wouldn’t be jealous? At all?”

“No,” she says. “If it were anyone else… maybe. But I trust Alucard. I trust Hector. And most of all, I trust you. Besides.” She tilts her head as she looks at him, fingertips gentle against his temple. “I know whose bed it is you’ll wind up in come the end of the night.”

“Always.” He kisses at her knuckles when they pass near his lips. “I don’t deserve you.”

“You deserve more than you think.”

“Hm.”

He spends several minutes there, content to rest in her lap as twilight blankets the world outside and the birds sing their last song of the day. Sypha sighs as she slides her book down to join the rest around her feet. “I suppose I’ll have to find something to do outside the castle for the day, won’t I?”

Trevor makes a noncommittal noise. “‘S a big place,” he mutters. “Maybe Alucard will finally let you into the dungeons.”

“Ha!” She snorts. “Unlikely. And I’d like to give the three of you some space for a while. Knowing you, it will be a _while_.”

“Thanks,” he says as an aside.

“That way it will be less…”

“Fucking awkward?”

“Indelicate, I was going to say. But yours fits too. What did Alucard say?”

“Not a lot, honestly. We didn’t, ah, hash out any details, if that’s what you mean. Wanted to make sure things were squared away with you first.”

“He probably means to do the same with Hector.” She hums playfully as she skates a finger down the back of his neck. Trevor shivers. “So. Hector, hm?”

Trevor sighs.

“It’s just that,” she starts, and he can almost feel the giggle bubbling inside her lungs before she manages to stifle it, “I would never have thought that the two of you might—”

Trevor’s breath hisses between his teeth. “Oh, let’s not.”

“He’s… different. Not in a bad way, I suppose. And he’s handsome enough.”

“Right. This is over.” He moves to get up and she whines in protest, pulling him closer before he can get away. He pinches at her sides just to hear her squeal as she squirms to escape. There in the library, listening to the peals of Sypha’s laughter as they bounce through the shelves and books, is the most at ease Trevor has felt in days. He presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth and thanks an absent God for allowing him to keep her as long as he has.

That night, the four of them once again sit down for an evening meal and the atmosphere in the kitchen is noticeably different. There isn’t so much idle banter as perfunctory, stilted formalities exchanged solely between Sypha and Alucard.

Hector has opted to bring a book to the table, which he only ever seems to do when he’s trying to actively avoid conversation. Trevor almost envies him. It’s at least more well-adjusted than sorting vegetables on his plate. Which he is doing again, by the way. His parsnips are on the verge of forming a sovereign nation, and there are promising developments underway amongst his sprouts. He wonders if Alucard has said anything to Hector yet, but by the way he’s shrunken almost totally into the pages of whatever it is he’s reading he suspects that to be the case.

God, what Trevor wouldn’t give to have been a fly on _that_ wall.

Halfway through their stiff and uncomfortable dinner, Sypha claps her hands together. She looks to everyone at the table and all the blood drains from Trevor’s face.

“I think,” she begins cheerfully, “that tomorrow I will spend the majority of the day in the hold. Personally, I think some of the sections on black magics could be more thoughtfully organized.”

To Trevor’s surprise, Hector lifts his head at that. His brow furrows in concern. “The black magic index is huge. That could take you all day. If you want, I could help you catalogue everything before—”

Alucard hums in disagreement. “No,” he tells Hector, gaze never moving from his plate. Hector throws him a puzzled look. “I think you are going to be rather busy tomorrow, actually.”

The implication takes a moment to sink in and when it does Trevor nearly chokes again. Hector’s eyes widen by a fraction when he realizes just what Alucard means by that. His face visibly reddens before he goes straight back to his book. Alucard spears a parsnip on his fork, teeth scraping audibly against its tines as he bites down.

Sypha grins sweetly. “Thanks, Hector, but I should be all right on my own. You needn’t rearrange any… plans… for me.”

Trevor drops his cutlery back on his plate with a clatter. He buries his face in his palms and lets loose a long, weary sigh. Hector hides his eyes beneath his fingers.

Alucard clears his throat. He takes up the half-empty bottle in the center of the table. “Would anyone like more wine?” he offers, and Trevor and Hector both nudge their glasses in his direction.

Later, after the entire embarrassing ordeal has concluded, Trevor returns to the study. As he’d been expecting, Alucard is again in his chair, scribbling away at something on the desk. He doesn’t turn to look at him.

“I will assume after what happened over dinner that you have spoken with Sypha.”

“Er, yeah. We talked. She’s… fine with it. If you couldn’t tell.”

Alucard laughs fondly. “Not exactly subtle, is she?”

“No.”

Trevor watches Alucard’s hands as he writes. He returns the quill pen to its inkwell, blotting over whatever he’d written to soak up any excess ink. When it’s dried he folds it into a neat square, topping it with a puddle of red wax from a candle. He seals it with a wooden stamp before it fully hardens. Trevor finds himself curious as to what the crest looks like. He wonders if it is the same seal his father had used, how old the stamp itself is.

Alucard interrupts his errant train of thought with a wave of his hand, beckoning him over. “Come; there are things we need to discuss.”

Trevor steps fully into the room for the second time that day. Lisa’s portrait again eyes him from the desk. Trevor strategically positions himself so the tall back of the chair hides her from view, because he’s not sure he can talk about sex with her son while she stares straight at him.

He’d known this part was coming, but he still finds himself unsure of what to expect. The whole thing is so fucking mad that he’s honestly looking forward to some clairty, anything straightforward after days and days of furtive glances and unspoken intentions. Trevor Belmont is better with actions than he is with thoughts, which probably comes as a surprise to absolutely no one. He prefers a hands-on approach to things that vex him.

Ha ha.

“To begin with,” Alucard says, rising from the chair. He turns to face Trevor, spreading his palms over the desk behind him as he leans back. He cocks his hip, entirely intentional, as though he’s anticipating the glance it draws from Trevor. He probably was. Bastard. “Let’s lay down some general boundaries.”

“Okay.”

“For the purpose of simplicity, I’ll assume this to be an isolated incident. I don’t think either of us plan to make this into a habit.”

“Ah, no, I don’t think so.” Frankly, Trevor’s not sure he could survive that.

“Another thing: this is something Hector and I have agreed to do _together._ You’ll not get me without him, nor him without me. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Alucard tilts his head back. He looks at Trevor down the slim, straight length of his nose. “Your turn.”

“I’m going to insist on keeping things transparent with Sypha. She deserves that much. If she asks, I will be honest. That’s non-negotiable.”

“Fine. I will request one thing, though: be delicate where Hector is concerned. You can tell her whatever you feel like in regards to me. There are no secrets between us. Hector, on the other hand, prefers to keep these things… strictly private.”

“I’m gonna remind you that this whole thing started because I happened to walk by while he was fucking you with the door wide open.”

There’s a noticeable twitch in Alucard’s jaw. He purses his lips. “Don’t be deliberately obtuse,” he mutters. “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it. If you feel the need to share certain aspects with Sypha then by all means go ahead, but all I am asking is that you spare her the overtly graphic details. This isn’t easy for Hector. It would mortify him.”

“All right.” Trevor shrugs. “Done.”

“Anything else?”

“Not that I can think of right now. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”

“Then we’ll move on to more specific rules. These are also non-negotiable. All of them. Firstly: all of us reserve the right to end this encounter whenever we decide. If I, or you, or Hector ask to stop, it stops, no questions asked. I’m sure it goes without saying, but it felt necessary to bring up.”

“Of course.”

“Next is something a bit more… sensitive.” Something flashes over Alucard’s face, fleeting and oddly human. Not quite vulnerability, but timid and bursting with emotion. “For obvious reasons which I don’t feel the need to elaborate upon, Hector does not like to mix pain with sex. Knowing this, you will be respectful in how you touch him, or this goes no further. Do you understand?”

“I… yeah.”

“Don’t hurt him. You can be as rough as you please with me, but not with him.”

Trevor tries to suppress the sudden rush of heat that last sentence ignites low in his belly. He shifts on his feet. “I would appreciate some specifics here, Alucard. I’ll do my best, but sometimes in the heat of the moment lines can get blurry. I don’t want that to happen.”

“Don’t manhandle him. No hair-pulling, no leaving marks, no holding him down. You’re not to call him names or say anything that could be perceived as degrading. He feels safer on his back, so if that’s what he decides don’t try to move him. There are scars; you’ll see them. Try not to stare. And under no circumstances are you to finish on or inside of him.”

“Done.”

“Again, none of that is up for debate. If something is unclear in the moment, ask. Better a few awkward seconds in explanation than the alternative.” Alucard fixes him with hard, severe eyes. “I don’t think you’d be stupid enough to, but if you raise a hand to him you’ll lose it. That is a promise. You are being offered this because I trust you, Trevor, and so does Hector. Don’t make us regret it.”

“I won’t.” Trevor shakes his head. “I’m not trying to fuck this up.”

“I would hope not. And you? What are your conditions?”

He hasn’t really given it much thought, honestly. He’d have been perfectly happy to simply feel this whole experience out, but he knows Alucard is asking for good reason. It’s only fair. Trevor thinks back to the night before, in this very study. The picture of Hector sprawled out in Alucard’s lap, sharp teeth at his throat, springs forth to the forefront of his mind. “I’d prefer it if you kept your fangs to yourself,” he tells him. “Or, between yourself and Hector. Or whatever. That’s… just a line I’m not about to cross.”

“Of course,” Alucard drawls, and Trevor can feel the effort it takes him to hold back the barb about how foul his blood probably tastes anyway. He could almost appreciate it, if Alucard weren’t _Alucard._

“Is it always like that?” he asks tentatively, because ever since last night he’s been curious. Alucard raises an elegant brow. “When you take his blood?”

“Not always.” He shakes his head slightly. “The feeding can be relaxing. Peaceful even. Hector’s told me before it’s like being in a warm bath, or drinking one glass of wine too much. But…” Trevor’s eyes wander towards the subtle shift of Alucard’s tongue behind his teeth, a soft flash of pink against his right fang. “I can taste it when he comes.”

Trevor’s air hisses on its way out of his lungs.

“Sometimes I let him fuck me. Sometimes I fuck him. It’s like… sinking your teeth into a ripe fruit, just at peak season. Does that answer your question, Trevor?”

“Um. Yeah.” Trevor swallows thickly. “What about you?” Trevor asks. Alucard blinks at him, as though he were surprised by the returned question. “Anything strictly off limits for you?”

He tosses his head back a bit to laugh. It’s a quiet, full sound that sets Trevor’s nerves on end despite just how smooth it feels on his ears. “As though you are capable of anything I couldn’t handle.”

It is a challenge if he’s ever heard one, and a thinly veiled one at that. Months ago, Trevor would have balked at Alucard’s perceived arrogance, but if he’s learned anything about this back-and-forth dynamic between them it’s that he doesn’t always have to rise to the bait.

Sometimes, it’s better to deny Alucard the reaction he wants.

Trevor traverses the short distance between them until he’s again nose to nose with Alucard, almost pressed flush against the hard line of his torso. Golden eyes watch him, rapt, as Trevor traps him there against the desk. He grabs carefully at the regal set of Alucard’s jaw. Again comes the faint stutter of breath, such a tiny fluctuation in the air gusting over Trevor’s own skin that it would have been lost had he not been looking for it. Alucard’s lips part as he turns his head to the side. The shadows the firelight throws over his face do little to obscure the gleam of his fangs in his mouth.

“You seem pretty confident about what I’m capable of,” Trevor murmurs to him.

Alucard grins. He laughs again, but doesn’t exactly say anything in response. The sound itself is pleasing, soft and exhilarating to hear now that the sun has sunken into darkness. Trevor strokes his thumb over the point of his chin.

“I wonder.” He cocks his head as he considers Alucard, the silky curtain of his hair, the lean of his body under Trevor’s, the glazed cut of his eyes as they settle at his lips. “Is that what you want?”

“Is _what_ what I want, Belmont?”

“For someone to manhandle _you?”_ he asks. The muted hiss he gets in answer is gratifying. “Someone to pull your hair? To throw you around? Someone who’s not afraid to make it hurt, just a little?”

Trevor can feel the strain in Alucard’s muscles as he surges for his mouth. He tightens his fingers around his pale jaw to keep him still and holds him there, relishing the strangled moan of complaint it earns him. He moves his head just before their lips have the chance to truly meet. It’s only a skim of pressure, the barely-there touch of Alucard’s soft, pink mouth against his own. Not close enough to be a kiss, but so much more than before.

“Well,” Alucard whispers, his breath sweet over Trevor’s tongue. “I suppose you’ll find out soon enough. Won’t you?”

Trevor lets him go. He tosses Alucard back with a little more force than necessary, admiring the way it jostles his hair about his face. There’s a flush sitting high and pretty at his cheekbones, faint and yet so very obvious over the pallor of his complexion. It makes him smile.

“When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Come to my bedroom in the northwest tower.”

“Should I bring anything?”

“Aside from the obvious?” His gaze dips down over Trevor’s chest and towards the front of his trousers. “No. Leave your whip behind.”

“Are you sure about that?”

_“Belmont.”_

Trevor tosses him the key to the armory, now warm from the heat of his hand. The way Alucard _almost_ struggles to catch it mid-air feels like a testament to just how fucking shaken he looks. Trevor couldn’t stifle the pride he feels over it if he tried.

“See you tomorrow afternoon, then,” he throws over his shoulder as he leaves. He takes the indignant little stammer that follows him out of the room as a trophy. “Good night, Alucard.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ummmm please leave me a comment and let me know what you think ;)))
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://isaidyoulookshitty.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/despommess).


End file.
